Filofax Girl

I've been seeing lots of questions about which Filofax might be best to use as a wallet. Naturally, depending on what you need and your personal preferences, your mileage will vary, but I use my Filofax personal sized Malden as my wallet and it's working out very well.

So here (in a rather large nutshell) is my review of the Filofax personal sized Malden used as a wallet...

So, first things first... this is my purple personal Malden.

Pretty!

Here's a picture of it (I know some people assign gender and names to them... I'm not there yet... but I do name my car) in my hand for scale. I'm 5'8," so if you're petite this will be different for you.

This is the front cover. On the left are several card slots and a zippered pocket. I use the zippered pocket for coins (which I do not carry a lot of) and my lucky poker chip. Yes, I am that person. The most commonly used cards go in these slots: my health insurance card, my drivers' license, grocery store loyalty card, bank debit card, etc.

I keep a slim Frixion pen (in purple) in the leather pen loop on the right.

Ignore the odd reflection of my dining room chandelier.

There is a larger pocket behind the card slots where I keep my cash. It's deep and I feel like my cash is secure in there. You know, all those ones.

Next up are the extra card sleeves. I have four and each one holds up to six cards. In these, I carry the cards I don't use as often, like the sprogs' health insurance cards, a couple of credit cards, and an insane number of gift cards that we haven't gotten around to using yet. I like this because I can actually see all the gift cards instead of shoving into the recesses of another wallet where they hide and I forget I have them. I also have a couple zippered pouches in here for odds and ends, like my emergency twenty, my motorcycle license (I haven't had it officially printed on my regular license yet, but that will be soon) and a Valentine my son gave me while we were at Children's Hospital.

Behind the card sleeves is my calendar. I carry only the month view and only keep things like appointments and other time obligations in it so if we're out and I have to schedule something, I have it all here. I usually sync this with my A5 home binder once a week, just so they're both up to date.

And this is the back. There is another large pocket on the back and a sleeve where a notepad can go.

Before I moved into the Malden, I was using this Coach large wallet. I do love it. But I had a terrible time keeping track of appointments and whatnot while I was out and inevitably made a hair appointment for the same time my sprogs had a dentist appointment or something equally irritating. I didn't want to carry a separate planner, and I was kind of frustrated with how most of my stuff was jammed into the wallet, and I had to drag all the gift cards out to find the one I wanted, and that was if I even remembered I had it.

Here's another view of the wallet and the Malden. Sorry for the lighting. This was just before Mother Nature dumped buckets on us.

And here's a side by side comparison of my checkbook, just a standard, regular old checkbook, next to the Malden.

So my transition into the Malden-as-wallet has been really easy. It does make things simpler for me in the long run, and while it does take up a little more space in my bag, it's completely worth it.